Vetinari Snapshots
by sunny-historian
Summary: I've invented some little events of Vetinari's life that might make sense. The do improve as you go on!
1. Loss

Disclaimer: It's sad, but Havelock Vetinari is the property of the marvellously inventive Terry Pratchett. His brother, though, is my idea, and so is this event. And I know it's OOC, but he's only 12!

  
  


A Vetinari did not cry. That had been the first thing he'd learnt.

An Assassin did not cry. That had been the third.

And in the long, lonely years between, he had learnt only one thing. To love his brother with a desperate love, for they were all that either of them had. For four years that had been so, he and his brother all in all to each other until he had had to go. Only those four years they had been together, and yet nothing had ever stood out more clearly in his mind. He had loved his brother desperately, he had loved his brother madly, he had loved his brother as David had loved Jonathan...

And now Edmund was dead. Assassinated... no. No! Murdered... he had been murdered, by the fifth-year with the pale, mad eyes.

A Vetinari did not cry. An Assassin did not cry.

  
  
  
  


A/N This came to me in a flash and I then made up a history to fit it: Havelock's mother died giving birth to his brother Edmund when Havelock was two. Their father's grief for their mother made him hate the children (or maybe he was just a bored aristocrat!), and so the brothers were left to bring each other up and had a very close bond. Then, at the age of ten, Edmund was murdered in that Assassins-school fashion of eliminating the opposition. This was part of what has so dehumanized Vetinari... (okay, now flame me, I know I deserve it for making up that chunk of sentiment...)


	2. Love

Disclaimer: Both characters belong to Terry Pratchett. Sob. I wish I could write like him...

  
  


A tinge of ruby blush came to his pallid cheeks as the girl drew her cool smooth hand along his neck of polished ivory.

"You're so tense, Havelock," she whispered with the slight Slavonic cadences that made his heart race, "Don't you vont to let go for vunce?"

"There are things that I cannot forget. Things that you shall not know."

"But vot I know is zat you vorry too much. Look at me, Havelock."

He looked, studying the fluffy, corn-coloured locks that framed her pink-and-white face so lightly, her long, slender hands lying on her breast, the long, straight white teeth that caught at her soft pink lip.

"Darling. It is hard to love ven vun is... vot I am, but I adore you. Can you not see it?"

At last he dared to gaze into her azure eyes, and nodded. "Yes, I see it. And I know nothing that I can say."

She leant closer to him, so that her thick, soft curls pooled into liquid gold on his sable robes. He met those twin stars of sapphire, her ardent eyes, with his own resolute gaze; but she spoke, and with her voice bound him as with a spell. "You say, 'I love you'. For you know zat it is vonderful."

Still he was undecided, in his immobility inviolable, but then he extended his lean arm. Slowly, as though in awe, he drew her to him and embraced her.

"Margolotta." It was the first time he'd said the name, and she melted as she knew the chill Parian marble of his brow would beneath the inferno of her furious, feverish kisses. "I know nothing of love."

"I do. I know I love you, and zat is a great zing. Vill you not love me?"

He closed his wide grey eyes in submission and then opened them. "I cannot. It is a betrayal, a treacherous act, I cannot be a traitor to Edmund!"

She drew away. "Who is Edmund?" she asked, and her voice was of ice. For the first time, Havelock remembered who - or rather, what - she was. How had he forgotten? And how had he forgotten Edmund, and his resolve? He had to remember forever. He could never risk forgetting again. 

"Edmund... was my brother." A Vetinari did not cry. "He was assassinated - murdered by a rival. He was ten." An Assassin did not cry! "I vowed that I would never love. I loved Edmund, and to love again would be betrayal."

She moved back to him and toyed with his heavy ebony hair. "Love for me vould be no betrayal. You vouldn't love a lover as a brother, you did not love your brother as a lover. You don't vont the pain again, of course I understand. But it vould not hurt to love again, so many years later."

He took her again into his arms. "You are most convincing, Margolotta. My love." His slate-grey eyes lightened at last as she traced the fine line of his narrow lips.

"It should be you, not me, who is the vampire. You have ze face for it." She spoke huskily and her laugh was breathless. He smiled, trying to hide his hastening heart.

"You have nothing for it... except your exquisite voice."

"You like my voice? Vould you like me to be traditional, Havelock?"

"No..." he kissed her then, for the first time, "You're most pleasant as you are."

She ran her slender fingers along his finely-chiselled features, caressing his shapely cheekbones and his vulpine, aristocratic nose, touching the strong line of his jaw, stroking his milk-white throat. "And I vould not vont to change you. So are ve agreed?"

"We are," said Havelock as the candles went out.

  
  


A/N An exercise in exoticism and adjectives!


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